Ladera Resort, Where the Pitons Become the Fourth Wall, Wins Best Design at the 2027 Condé Nast Johansens Awards for Excellence

The open-wall suites that make the adults-only St. Lucia resort The Most Romantic Place on Earth, built by hand between the Pitons, take the "Best Design" title for North, Central and South America

SOUFRIÈRE, Saint Lucia, Nov. 10, 2026 — Ladera Resort in St. Lucia won Best Design in the 2027 Condé Nast Johansens Awards for Excellence, announced for North, Central and South America. At Ladera, nearly every suite is open on one side to the Pitons and the Caribbean, so the view is not outside the room but part of it. Since the Awards for Excellence are decided in part by votes from guests and travel professionals, the design title reflects how that architecture feels to the people who stay there.

Ladera stands on a volcanic ridge 1,000 feet above the Caribbean, on 18 acres of a former cocoa plantation outside Soufrière, with Gros Piton and Petit Piton on either side. The two peaks anchor the Pitons Management Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004, and Ladera is the only resort inside it.

The design the award recognizes is the one the property has been building around since Ladera, Spanish for "hillside," pioneered the three-walled room. Thirty-five of the resort's 37 suites and villas follow that signature open-wall design, standing open on the fourth side to the Pitons, the rainforest and the sea. There is no glass and no partition. The mountains sit in the room the way a wall would. Every suite has a private heated plunge pool set into the terrace. The resort follows the line of the ridge, so no two rooms look out on quite the same view. That pairing of openness and privacy, with the Pitons inside the room, is what Ladera means when it calls itself The Most Romantic Place on Earth.

The interiors are St. Lucian. Furniture, picture frames, bathroom vanities and signage across the property are made on site by local craftsmen, among them Boniface Modeste, named Craft and Souvenir Retailer of the Year at the 2025/26 GIMIES. Property and maintenance manager Eustace Augustin, who has been at Ladera for more than 40 years, won the GIMIES Small Hotel Employee award in 2024. The buildings themselves were made by hand from local wood, stone and clay, with the wood sourced directly from St. Lucians. Ninety-nine percent of the Ladera team comes from the Soufrière and Choiseul basin and the wider island.

Ladera's position inside the Pitons Management Area comes with a stewardship brief. The resort harvests rainwater, heats water by solar and runs LED lighting throughout, and most of its 18 acres is left as forest and garden. Saint Lucia's national tourism awards named Ladera the winner of the Sustainable Tourism Award for 2025/26.

"The Condé Nast Johansens Awards for Excellence are among the most prestigious honours in luxury hospitality, and winning the 2027 award for Best Design is an extraordinary moment for Ladera Resort," said Sian Jungreuthmayer, UK & Europe Representative for Ladera Resort, Saint Lucia. "It was a tremendous personal honour to accept this award on behalf of the resort. More importantly, it is a recognition of the passion, dedication and hard work of the entire Ladera team, who bring this exceptional place to life every day. We share this honour with everyone who voted for us and helped make this achievement possible."

It is the second consecutive year Condé Nast Johansens has recognized the property, which won Best Hotel Spa for North America and the Caribbean in the 2026 awards for lévé Wellness & Spa.

The spa that won it is part of the same design. lévé Wellness & Spa was designed by St. Lucian designer Darnal Augustin and built by a local contractor under property manager Eustace Augustin, and spans 25,000 square feet above the rainforest valley. Its signature treatment, Harmony for Two, is designed for couples.

The award follows a whole-property renovation, completed in November 2025, that redesigned every suite. Ladera also holds One MICHELIN Key in the MICHELIN Guide's 2026 hotel selection, and in October it was named Saint Lucia's Leading Honeymoon Resort at the 2026 World Travel Awards.

The newest additions make the point. The Hideaway Rum Bar serves small-batch St. Lucian rum in a candlelit cave setting, and the Wine Room of Dasheene holds more than 170 labels alongside locally inspired tasting menus. The T'cholit Lounge takes its French-Creole name from a tree in the restaurant area that was once full of tree frogs.

Rooms, suites and villas can be booked at www.ladera.com. 

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SOURCE Ladera